The Art of Letters | Page 5

Jesus Christ," he introduces the next
episode in the story of his conversion with the sentence: "But upon a
day the good providence of God called me to Bedford to work at my
calling, and in one of the streets of that town I came where there were
three or four poor women sitting at a door in the sun, talking about the
things of God." That seems to me to be one of the most beautiful
sentences in English literature. Its beauty is largely due to the hungry
eyes with which Bunyan looked at the present world during his
progress to the next. If he wrote the greatest allegory in English
literature, it is because he was able to give his narrative the reality of a
travel-book instead of the insubstantial quality of a dream. He leaves
the reader with the feeling that he is moving among real places and real
people. As for the people, Bunyan can give even an abstract virtue--still
more, an abstract vice--the skin and bones of a man. A recent critic has
said disparagingly that Bunyan would have called Hamlet Mr.
Facing-both-ways. As a matter of fact, Bunyan's secret is the direct
opposite of this. His great and singular gift was the power to create an
atmosphere in which a character with a name like Mr.
Facing-both-ways is accepted on the same plane of reality as Hamlet.
If Bunyan was a realist, however, as regards place and character, his
conception of life was none the less romantic. Life to him was a story
of hairbreadth escapes--of a quest beset with a thousand perils. Not
only was there that great dragon the Devil lying in wait for the traveller,
but there was Doubting Castle to pass, and Giant Despair, and the lions.
We have in The Pilgrim's Progress almost every property of romantic
adventure and terror. We want only a map in order to bring home to us
the fact that it belongs to the same school of fiction as Treasure Island.
There may be theological contentions here and there that interrupt the
action of the story as they interrupt the interest of Grace Abounding.
But the tedious passages are extraordinarily few, considering that the
author had the passions of a preacher. No doubt the fact that, when he

wrote The Pilgrim's Progress, he was not definitely thinking of the
edification of his neighbours, goes far towards explaining the absence
of commonplace arguments and exhortations. "I did it mine own self to
gratify," he declared in his rhymed "apology for his book." Later on, in
reply to some brethren of the stricter sort who condemned such
dabbling in fiction, he defended his book as a tract, remarking that, if
you want to catch fish,
They must be groped for, and be tickled too, Or they will not be catch't,
whate'er you do.
But in its origin The Pilgrim's Progress was not a tract, but the
inevitable image of the experiences of the writer's soul. And what wild
adventures those were every reader of Grace Abounding knows. There
were terrific contests with the Devil, who could never charm John
Bunyan as he charmed Eve. To Bunyan these contests were not
metaphorical battles, but were as struggles with flesh and blood. "He
pulled, and I pulled," he wrote in one place; "but, God be praised, I
overcame him--I got sweetness from it." And the Devil not only fought
him openly, but made more subtle attempts to entice him to sin.
"Sometimes, again, when I have been preaching, I have been violently
assaulted with thoughts of blasphemy, and strongly tempted to speak
the words with my mouth before the congregation." Bunyan, as he
looked back over the long record of his spiritual torments, thought of it
chiefly as a running fight with the Devil. Outside the covers of the
Bible, little existed save temptations for the soul. No sentence in The
Pilgrim's Progress is more suggestive of Bunyan's view of life than
that in which the merchandise of Vanity Fair is described as including
"delights of all sorts, as whores, bawds, wives, husbands, children,
masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, pearls,
precious stones, and what not." It is no wonder that one to whom so
much of the common life of man was simply Devil's traffic took a
tragic view of even the most innocent pleasures, and applied to himself,
on account of his love of strong language, Sunday sports and
bell-ringing, epithets that would hardly have been too strong if he had
committed all the crimes of the latest Bluebeard. He himself, indeed,
seems to have become alarmed when--probably as a result of his own

confessions--it began to be rumoured that he was a man with an
unspeakable past. He now demanded that "any woman in heaven,